Create Infographics Online

Create Infographics for Free: A Review of the Top 5 Free Online Tools

The maxim “a picture is worth a thousand words,” is one reiterated time and time again. Apparently the online community has finally taken the adage to heart – in the past two years tens of thousands of infographics have flooded the web, visually eviscerating every topic from business telecommunications history to entrepreneurial characteristics to Star Wars. Infographics are a powerful link-building tool and should be part of every SEO and marketing manager’s arsenal, but they can also be a very expensive tool; Visual.ly designs professional infographics for clients starting at $4,000. Fortunately free infographic creation tools abound and my efforts to jump on the infographic bandwagon gave me the opportunity to sample five of the top online tools.

Below are my favorite infographic tools that not only have extensive features, but they are easy to use and are – for the most part – free!

Beginners who crave simplicity will love Easel.ly’s intuitive design tools. It’s also one of the few tools that give you full access to its features completely free of charge.

A snapshot of one of the canvases you can use in Easel.ly.

Pros:

It’s completely free; all you need to do is register and start creating

There are tons of easy-to-use design features: Easel.ly has the most visual elements of any free infographic creator with 15 “vhemes” (professionally designed themes) to choose from, objects with a multitude of categories, and over 24 backgrounds

You can upload files to the infographic to insert your own images, graphs, and charts

Cons:

Though there are 3 canvases to choose from (landscape, portrait, and mobile), there is no way to change the canvas size

Cons:

Perfect for those wanting to display their Excel data in a more sophisticated and interactive medium. Like Easel.ly, you have full access to features free of charge; however, an Infogr.am store is in development so that may change in the future.

Pros:

You can create infographics, graphs, pictograms, and charts in Infogr.am by uploading CSV files or manually entering data

You can increase the size of the canvas by adding more graphs or images

It’s completely free and very easy to use

Cons:

It is in the beta stages, so it can be buggy. Infogr.am has a contact form if you need technical support or have any other questions

Cons:

Though you cannot create infographics in Visual.ly, the site is an infographics goldmine; according to the site, it is the “largest visualization showcase in the world.”

Pros:

You can submit infographics you’ve created to the site to be perused and used by others, which is valuable for getting exposure and building links

You can browse over 20,000 infographics and embed them in your website for free

Visual.ly will create a free, personal infographic of your social media presence from Twitter or Facebook accounts. It’s a neat tool, but also a creative marketing ploy

Cons:

You cannot create your own infographics using this tool, but the designers at Visual.ly will design one for you starting at $4,000

Forging your own path with PowerPoint

If you desire a great deal of control over the look and feel of your infographic, designing one in PowerPoint may be the route for you. I followed HubSpot’s “Marketer’s Guide to Creating Infographics in PowerPoint” to create my first infographic (see the results here) and it was fairly easy to do, but my lack of design experience made the process a bit time-consuming and tedious. I only recommend it for those with a great deal of PowerPoint and design experience or people patient enough to learn.

Pros:

You have more control over the design of the infographic

There are tons of free online design tools, such as Inkscape, Gimp, OpenClipArt, and Creately, to help you create custom graphics

Putting the slides together in Pixlr gives you a tremendous amount of control over the canvas size and shape

Cons:

Depending on your PowerPoint and design skills, the creation process can be very time-consuming

All-in-all, infographics seem to be a wave of the future coming to fruition with the advent of social media. Interestingly enough, infographics are not a new means of information transmission at all, and have actually been around for hundreds of years. Check out some of the most influential infographics of the 19th Century, here via FastCompany Design.

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